Author: Beloo Mehra
Date published: January 29, 2026
As a Collaborating Center of SAIEN (Sri Aurobindo Integral Education Network), BhāratShakti regularly contributes to the SAIEN Blog. On Divine Grace and Personal Effort is our SIXTH blog published on SAIEN platform.
The entire existence, this world is a gradual self-expression and manifestation of the Divine, says the Indian spiritual tradition. But without the vision to experience the world, and everything and everyone in the world, as a manifestation of the Divine, and more importantly, without the experience of our own self as a manifestation and as a portion of the Divine, we continue to exist in Ignorance and separated from the omnipresence of the Divine.
Only through a sincere aspiration and an intense personal effort of the sadhak the Divine Grace begins to slowly tear apart the many layers of the veil behind which is hidden the deeper, inner vision which is able to see the Divine all around and within. Such intense sadhana also includes rejection of all that obstructs the path of aspiration, and surrender of one’s entire being and all the movements within – the act of aspiration and the rejection included – as an offering to the Divine so that He may decide the course of one’s sadhana and its outcome.
“The Divine Grace is there ready to act at every moment, but it manifests as one grows out of the Law of Ignorance into the Law of Light, and it is meant, not as an arbitrary caprice, however miraculous often its intervention, but as a help in that growth and a Light that leads and eventually delivers…. This Divine may lead us often through darkness, because the darkness is there in us and around us, but it is to the Light he is leading and not to anything else.”
(Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga – I, CWSA, Vol. 28, p. 357)
While the Divine Grace is there all the time, its action in an individual’s life is dependent upon how ready one is for the working of this Grace. This readiness is a matter of several things – one’s aspiration, surrender, faith, sincerity and one’s receptivity.
As long as one is primarily living in Ignorance and as long as one’s lower nature is the primary driving force behind one’s actions – which is a very, very long time – one may never fully or even partially get to sense the working of this Grace in one’s life. The more the veil of Ignorance is lifted bit by little bit, the more one is able to see how even from behind this veil, the Divine in His Vast, Compassionate Grace has been the protector amidst the dark chambers of the Ignorance, and slowly guide towards brighter and brighter Light.